


The Chambers and The Valves

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, Post - Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:18:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people get monogrammed towels. They have his and hers complex PTSD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chambers and The Valves

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Written for Allie, originally posted on tumblr. Moving over here for archive reasons. Kind of in the same vein as _Holding On and Letting Go._

Boys and girls are taught not to make promises that they can’t keep. Men and women forget. They promise that they’ll never hurt each other again, as if love has ever predicated the absence of pain. As if they didn’t love each other like phantom limbs for years, feeling the twinges of a piece of themselves that they’d lopped off long ago. They have a natural talent for hurting each other.

Will follows Mac out of the control room and into the bullpen, ripping his earpiece out of his ear, rambling plaintively. “Didn’t you see what I did?!”

She doesn’t know what to tell him. _Obviously I did, I had to hand off the broadcast to Jim? And obviously you heard me hyperventilating over a cheap shot you took at the Majority Whip’s Iraq policy? So you could have the shock value, the soundbyte. And I lived that soundbyte, but you didn’t know that._

There’s a list of triggers in the top drawer of her desk, written on a folded piece of paper ripped off her shrink’s legal pad. She could show him that, but then he’d obsess over that. Because Will is obsessive and pathological, and he’ll use it to hurt himself.

Instead, she wheels around on him as soon as they step into her office. “Yes, you’re an asshole who doesn’t do as he’s told and you don’t know everything about my triggers because I’m slow about it and you were insensitive and I almost panicked.”

Will is beating himself up, eyes focused just a little too much, shoulders a little too tense, leaning just a bit forward. He’s trying to shut it down, but inertia is keeping worry etched clearly into his features. Worried and vulnerable and helpless, and Will doesn’t handle helpless. Will drowns helpless in self-destruction, because that, at least, is a choice.

So she softens herself, takes one of his hands, and drags him towards the middle of her office, closing the door behind her. “And you’re going to take me out for dinner and when you take me home, go down on me until I say you can stop,” she teases, and he cracks a nervous smile. Which makes her take a deep breath. “And then I will explain more things that only Jim knows and this will never happen again.”

Any trace of a smile immediately vanishes. “I said, I promised you—”

Mac sighs, wrapping both arms around her folio. Considering him, trying to figure out which wire to cut in Will’s psyche that won’t make the whole thing explode.

She shrugs, deciding to try and goad him into bantering with her. Deflect, at least, until they get home. She knew this was going to happen, didn’t she? Will was going to hurt her again, and work himself into a downward guilt spiral, and overcompensate. And she can foresee an immediate future of Tiffany blue boxes and manic smiles, and she doesn’t _want it._

Smiling until she feels the corners of her eyes pinch, she tries to brush it off. “I knew you’re an asshole when I said yes, I mean I kind of humored you on the whole ‘never hurting me ever again’ thing and the ‘physical law’ thing and the ‘cutting paper’ thing, but I figured I had to considering whatIhad said—”

“Wait, you didn’t believe the ‘physical law’ thing?” he stammers out, and she snorts, watching him shift gears.  

Biting her lip, she cocks her head and scoffs. “You switched into a very strange mode of speechwriter I’d never seen before—you were mixing your metaphors and stammering, it was kind of freaky.”

But then the gears stop meshing, and reverse, and she realizes her miscalculation.

“MacKenzie,” he says, reaching for her.

His arms come around her waist, and he tugs her close until they’re pressed against each other.

“Honey,” she tells him matter-of-factly, lightly resting her palms on his chest, deliberately ignoring his hands clenching into the back of her shirt. “Honey. You’re scared and you’re flipping out. But I am fine.”

“You’re pale,” Will protests quietly, jerking a hand up from her back to brush his index finger down the curve of her cheek.

And she probably is; her lips were purple before Will tore out of the studio as soon as Herb said they were clear, apologies streaming out of his mouth even though his mic was off and she could only see the words forming on the monitors. Mac doesn’t know how to convince him that she’s fine. That this has been happening for four years now, over time less and less and sometimes it still comes up and wallops her and yes, it coming out of _his_ mouth probably did that.

“Yes, that happens,” she explains gently, before standing on her tip-toes and leaning her forehead against his, quirking a grin. “Xanax makes my blood pressure drop, and you’re going to use that talented mouth of yours to raise it again.”

“Mac,” he groans, laughing feebly. “That was terrible.”

But his shoulders relax just enough that she’s no longer worried about waking up tomorrow under a mountain of diamonds, and maybe just under a plate of waffles. She can manage a guilt spiral that produces waffles and bacon. That guilt spiral means they spend the morning in bed and she lets him be on top and they mock the weekend round table shows while she spills gossip about the guests that Tess and Maggie and Tamara always have their ear to the ground for.

“Besides you have shit of your own, too. What are you gonna do, bubble wrap me?” she giggles, and then bites her lip. “God knows I’ve accidentally done enough to you.” Mac knows she could go more deeply into that, but doesn’t. Dredging things up is… they’ve put it behind them. They’ve both put a lot of things behind them. “We’re not kids, Will. Some people get monogrammed towels. We have his and hers complex PTSD.”

And there’s no way to go back to a time where they didn’t. There’s no way she can try to imagine Will without it. There’s no way Will can conceive of himself—there is nobefore,for him. In a way, she envies him. But either way, the hands they’ve been dealt and the way they’ve chosen to play them suckand now they’re just trying to make it through the next round. And it’s more than okay.

They’re happy, a majority of the time. Happy with each other, even, ninety-something percent of the time. The rest of the time, they know that whatever they’re feeling they’ll get past without it killing them. Because they’re not kids anymore.

“Now c’mon, idiot,” she smirks, leaning in to nibble on his bottom lip. “We’ll do takeout from Patsy’s and if you’re very good I’ll let you eat your tiramisu off me.”

And with that, he caves.

They pretend that they both aren’t aware that neither of them will be able to sleep tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
